Free Serial Hottie by Kelly Oram Page B

It’s time for you to start taking on some grown-up responsibility. Especially if you’re going to own your own car.” She paused to smile at me over her coffee mug. “I trust you to make a good decision.”
    Ugh, she was going for the whole guilt trip thing. She’d been lecturing me on the responsibilities of having my own car for weeks. If I told her I couldn’t handle this on my own, she’d probably tell me I couldn’t get one.
    Well, if she could go for the guilt trip, then so could I. “Don’t you want to go with me, Mom? It’s for my sweet sixteen. We could go just the two of us. Spend the day together. Get some lunch? We don’t do that very often.”
    The truth is, offering some quality girl time just the two of us was pretty underhanded of me. My mom’s a lot more like Angela, and it’s no secret that I’m my dad’s daughter. I felt a little bad manipulating her, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
    My mom got really quiet as she set down her coffee cup. I had her! She was going to give in—I could see it in her eyes. When she finally spoke I waited for her to say okay, but what came out of her mouth was, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I just can’t today.”
    That’s when I realized what she was doing. “She totally got to you!” I accused.
    “What?” My mom sounded startled.
    “I’m going to kill her!”
    “Kill who?”
    “Angela!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “That little bi—”I caught myself in time to not get grounded. “Brat!”
    “Ellie! What is the matter with you?”
    I couldn’t help getting angry at my mom. “You’re blowing me off because you want me to have to go with Seth!”
    Mom couldn’t find a reply—I’d hit the nail right on the head.
    “You’re as bad as she is!” I yelled.
    “Ellie, stop shouting,” my mom said, her voice becoming stern. “It was very nice of Seth to offer to help you. He’s brand new in town and just wants to spend time with the only people his age that he knows. It would be very rude to cancel on him.”
    “Oh, please. You don’t care about offending anyone. You just want your freak daughter to be more like your perfect one.”
    “Eleanor Elizabeth Westley!”
    I’d crossed a line with that one, but I didn’t take it back. I folded my arms stubbornly, falling into a staring match with my mom. I waited for her to start in on me, waited for the lecture and the grounding that I deserved, and was really surprised when I got compassion. “Angela’s not perfect, sweetheart, and you’re not a freak.”
    My mom reached across the table and put her hand on my arm. She had that proud-parent look in her eyes. “You are a smart, strong, beautiful young woman, Ellie,” she said. “It was only a matter of time before boys started realizing that. And now that they are, you’re going to have to learn how to deal with it.”
    “Oh, geez!” I sank back in my chair, more uncomfortable than I’d ever been in my life. This was not the lecture I’d been expecting.
    “I’m serious, Ellie.”
    “So am I. I’ll just wait for dad to get a car.”
    “You know how awful your dad felt about having to leave this weekend. He’ll feel even worse if you don’t get your car before your birthday. He knows how much you’ve been looking forward to it.”
    “It’ll be fine Mom. One week won’t kill me.”
    “It’s more than that, Ellie. Your father and I know you’re bummed about your friends being gone this summer and missing your birthday.”
    “I’ll throw her a party,” Angela said, coming into the kitchen. “The Fourth is this Friday, which doesn’t give me much time, but I’ll bet I can pull it off.”
    My mom looked at me hopefully and sighed when I shook my head. “This is your sixteenth birthday,” she said. “It should be special.”
    That struck a nerve, no matter how hard I was trying not to let it. “Well, there’s no way a stupid party full of Angela’s friends is going to make it special,” I